Bad Boy (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "The sky was the same gray-white as the skim milk Tracie poured into her coffee..." (more)
Key Phrases: farm cakes, pants thing, most beautiful eyes, Mother's Day, James Dean, The Lovely Girl (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For all its hip talk and flaunting of high-tech accessories, Goldsmith's (The First Wives Club) cream-puff new read is an old-fashioned tale of love and friendship. In the new SeattleDa town suddenly stinking rich, "famous for its bad boys, good coffee, and Micro Millionaires"DTracie Higgins is a young reporter for the Seattle Times. Though she has a musician-poet-lout boyfriend, every Sunday Tracie meets platonic chum Jonathan Delano for brunch. Jonathan is a techno-wizard for Micro/Con; he is responsible, dedicated, environmentally correct; good to his mother and stepmothers; and alas, an ugly duckling dweeb who hasn't had sex in a year. Tracie agrees to give him a "make over": the clothes, the moves, the haircut, the linesDin short, attitude. "Women don't want nice guys," she says. She should know. In fact, every man in the book (except Jon) is a selfish leech, abusive or indifferent. Every woman seems clueless. But the dialogue is crisp and funny, and though the characters are shallow, they're lively, comradely and comic. The makeover itself is wonderfully funny, especially as poor Jon remains pretty hapless on the pickup. Soon, however, his spiffy clothes, spiked hair, stale lines and casual cruelty turn his love life around. Has the loyal friend, the true lover, the decent, smart, stock-optioned man vanished into chic-ether? Read on. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Tracie and Jonny are just buddies complaining to each other about their lousy love lives until Tracie decides to remake Jonny as a red-hot loverAand then falls for him.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Signet (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451204956
• ISBN-13: 978-0451204950
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 3.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,193,039 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, July 1, 2001

By	Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Bad Boy (Hardcover)

I'm a huge Olivia Goldsmith fan. I reread _First_Wives_Club_ from time to time, and I adore _Bestseller_. I even keep copies of her lesser works around, on the theory that there will be another long winter night when I need some high-quality mind-candy to keep me company in front of the fire. This book, however, went to the used bookstore as soon as I finished it. And even finishing it was a struggle.

What's wrong with this book? A better question would be what's right about this book, and the answer to that is "not much". Basically, the writing style is fluent and the first 70 pages are enjoyable. My specific quibbles with the book are:

-- shoddy research: you cannot fly from Tacoma to Seattle, since the Seattle-Tacoma International airport serves Seattle AND Tacoma

-- more shoddy research: people in Seattle talk about locations in it by neighborhood name, not by intersection

-- more shoddy research: the Mother's Day journey Jon undertakes is almost certainly not possible on a bicycle

-- more shoddy research: Jon's experience at a high tech powerhouse is unlike anyone's experience at any high tech powerhouse I have ever worked at, heard about from employees, or can imagine

-- still more shoddy research: what kind of newspaper reporter gets to work regular hours, let alone never be at work? what kind of full-time newspaper writer produces only four or five fluff pieces in a several-month period?

(All this shoddy research makes me wonder why she bothered to set a book in a location and setting she knew nothing about.)

More things that are wrong with this book:

-- stupid plotlines, unresolved issues and weird digressions

-- unlikable, unbelievable, unrealistic characters

-- a foreshortened ending, which was entirely unsatisfying and unbelievable

(All of which makes me wonder why she wrote it so fast, so short, and so poorly.)

I'm sorry I bothered to finish the book. I only did so because I just couldn't bring myself to believe that Olivia Goldsmith could write such a bad book. But she could, and she did. I will be buying her next book in paperback. I hope it's better than this one.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A VERY FUNNY NOVEL!, January 6, 2001

By	Nick Gonnella - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Bad Boy (Hardcover)

Tracie Higgins is a writer in a dead-end relationship with a musician. Jon is a work-aholic who can't get ANY KIND OF relationship. These two young people are good friends, and every Sunday night thet get together for coffee, and to talk about their problems.

Jon gets an idea, he can have Tracie transform him into a heartbreaker, the kind of guy women fall all over. At first Tracie thinks the idea is silly, but she does agree to help her friend. What ensues is a hysterical journey of expensive haircuts, the latest fashions, and very bad pick-ups ( the airport scene being one of the funniest).

As the two continue with the scheme, they realize they both MAY have found the right person...in each other.

"Bad Boy" is another funny read from Olivia Goldsmith. Ms. Goldsmith has the knack of churning out fresh, funny, and totally un-putdownable novels.

Readers will undoubtly root for true love to prevail, once they have caught their breath from laughing so hard.

Nick Gonnella

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Thumbs down from this Goldsmith fan, February 28, 2001

By	Kinsey Millhone (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Boy (Hardcover)

I love Olivia Goldsmith's books -- THE BESTSELLER is one of the best-ever books in its genre, and THE FIRST WIVES CLUB and FLAVOR OF THE MONTH were tremendous fun. So I couldn't wait to read this book. What a disappointment. Goldsmith is far better at capturing the lives of glittering, glamorous people than a group of fairly ordinary Seattle twentysomethings. The plot is predictable from beginning to end. And did Goldsmith even visit Seattle, or did she do her research long distance? At one point Jon goes to the Seattle airport because he thinks it would be a good place to pick up women. He zeroes in on a flight arriving from Tacoma. Uh, Olivia, the Seattle airport is practically IN Tacoma. That's why it's called SEATAC.

Arriving only 11 months after the 500-page YOUNG WIVES, BAD BOY is a bad book that I can only imagine Goldsmith simply rushed to finish. Next time, I hope she takes a little more time and produces a yummy novel that's worth waiting for.